US Since 1945

Episodes

On July 16, 1969, Americans Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins sat atop a Saturn V rocket and were blasted away from the surface of the Earth on a journey across 300,000 kilometers to land and walk on the Moon. The choice of which astronaut would step on the lunar surface first came almost by chance- because Armstrong was the Commander of the flight, his seat was closer...

By 1966, interest in LSD had proliferated in the public sphere to an enormous extent. The debate over the chemical’s risks and therapeutic possibilities led to Senate subcommittee hearings on its use. Acid, as LSD is commonly called, had been sensationalized by mass media publications and, although in its early years it had been extensively and responsibly studied by medical professionals, the effects...

In 1964, psychologists Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert published The Psychedelic Experience, a manual intended to prepare the users of psychedelic drugs for sessions. The authors had researched the therapeutic aspects of psychedelic substances, as well as their religious possibilities. The book is heavily influenced by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, (also known as Bardo Thodol) a funerary...

Between 6:00 and 9:00 PM on the night of Friday October 26, 1962, the tenth day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the members of President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Committee of the National Security (ExCom) received sections of a long, emotional private message from Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev revealed the underlying logic of the Cuban Missile Crisis when he wrote, “I see,...

Timothy Murphy, author of AIDS, Morality, and Culture, recalled that in, “A 1988 report…some 8 to 60 percent of persons surveyed considered AIDS to be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior.” Many of President Ronald Reagan’s closest advisors also felt the individuals who had contracted AIDS were deserving of the plague that was now cleansing the earth of the unfaithful. Much of...

At 0800 hours on July 1, 1946, the United States conducted the Able Test in Bikini Lagoon, the first of three scheduled atomic bomb tests that were part of Operation Crossroads. Among those who witnessed the atomic bomb test was Joseph Patrick McShane Jr., a nineteen year old sailor from Oaklyn, New Jersey. From the deck of a transport ship, McShane watched the blast, which was “I think about...

In 1983 and 1984, controversy erupted over the methods used in Dr. Robert Gallo’s laboratory at the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Luc Montagnier’s laboratory of the Pasteur Institute in France. Dr. Montagnier’s lab released an article on AIDS research in May of 1983, but only after Dr. Gallo had peer-reviewed and added his own abstract. Prior to the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Gallo and his lab...

Jacqueline Rhoads landed in Vietnam in 1970 at the age of twenty-two. On the day she arrived, Rhoads started her work as an emergency room nurse. She recalls the mass-casualty events the most. For her small unit, mass-casualty was anything more than ten wounded at a time. Mass-casualty situations often taxed supplies such that not enough supplies remained to save everyone. It was the code of the medical...

James Johnson served as chaplain in Vietnam with the 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division during 1967. Johnson never carried a weapon, but he was still exposed to the horrors that the soldiers and other men in his division experienced. “I was determined to go on combat missions,” stated Johnson, “I couldn’t stay in base camp knowing the guys were going to be faced with terror.”...

Linda Reed, who during the 1960’s was raising three kids and
working in a factory outside of Gratz, Pennsylvania, never noticed a change in
anyone who returned from Vietnam. She knew many people who served in Vietnam,
but resuming civilian life, none of those she knew exhibited outward effects of
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She was happy that those who had left
had arrived home safe. A...